Hi All, I came online to see if there was anyway to have my new Alpha 65 do something that I could make the Alpha 700 do.

I setup the A700 to effectively do a focus hold when I half press the shutter button, but with no exposure lock. This allows me to use AF-S with a chosen zone, usually the middle zone - I start my shot by choosing the target to focus on and hold the shutter at half press, then I move the camera to frame the image well and maintain the original focus - the exposure is calculated using the final framing shot, this makes a very quick method for taking a scene where a target is not centered. Its good for portraits within a group of people, its good for low-light distance photography - allowing you to find a non-hunting auto-focus zone the same distance from your intended target.

The Alpha 65 is a nice machine - I intend to sell the A700 and my handy-cam and just use the A65, but I am trying to find the best way to just do a focus hold on lenses that don't have their own focus hold button, without changing exposure settings - i,e, allowing exposure to recalculate continuously.

The A700 even had the ability to switch the manual focus if you wanted to toggle this feature, but the switch on A65 is too clunky for fast repetitive use. What's worse is that the video function is held back by it. Having lightning fast autofocus for video with just house lighting conditions is fantastic, being able to hold the focus and auto-adjust the exposure would be the cream on the cake for video shooting in rooms with multiple potential targets.

I only just got this A65 - I still have much to learn - I may have to either learn to master the options like registered facial recognition or even become a master at puling focus manually.

I see the A65 encourages manual focus pulling with the peaking feature, maybe this is the way to go.

I have a Sigma 24-70-2.8 HSM and a Minolta 80-200-2.8 SSM as my main lenses. The Minolta lens makes no noise when moving, but plenty of noise stopping and starting, whereas the Sigma is quiet and has built in DMF. If only the Sigma had the focus hold button like the Minolta does.